fresh meat Newbie to PhP seeks advice

Hiya all

Right I have decided that I want to learn php, to make my site more interactive.....

But its a huge subject and where do I start, I just want to get my hands dirty. I have a fair few  E- books on php so can get help in those. But is it bet to HASH at other people's scripts to get a feel for how things work or have a few simple project to hand to get ya! feet wet....

My foot is on the first brick of the yellow brick road...

Any suggestions on how to begin...besides get ya! nose in tha book.... lol  ;D ;D ;)

Cheers

Hi,

try some tutorials, or better use a php beginners book this way you have more information plus tutorials

and read for every function you're using the php manual (the best manual I ever saw)

yes, start of on some tutorials, like found right here in the webdigity tutorial section. You can also have a look on my own tutorial site: phpinclude.net where the tutorials are more detailed and written for beginners like you. (This reminds me, I have to put up some more tutorials...)

The most important is to understand how programming works in general. Php is not a difficult language as it has anything a rookie needs (plus it has anything a IT specialist wants :) ) so if you have some basic programming knowledge, the only thing that you have to learn in theory is the three tier model which is applicable for any web development language.

For example the memory is used only per script and it vanishes after the page execution. So that means that if your application needs to know some information for the user while he/she browses your site, you should use session variables. Ok I am not a teacher, but I hope this small example gives you the idea :)

Hey Guys,

Cheers for all that,  has given me food for thought,

Thanks Mind_nl for the links, I think I will give those tutourials a try only two but its a start:)

Nikolas, thanks for the theory advice, do you know any good structure/theory books or links to learn the basic concepts?

try "Beginning PHP" from Apress

Let me know how understandable my tutorials are to a beginner!

Mind_nl.....your on mate, I will let you know how I get on....If you have a emaiil link on your site I will mail you....

Visitor counter:- sounds really good to have a go at, so I will let you know soon,

Got my nose in at moment PHP & MySQL for Dummies 2nd Edition, Wiley Publishing, Inc.  at mo for a bit of grounding first....maybe not a good choice but hey....


Olaf....."try "Beginning PHP" from Apress" had a look in my ebook collection and can't find the that one, I might have to do the dreaded thing and buy it :-O :-$ lol OH well

hehe, must be an old titel, I think this is a new edition:

http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=143